


black banners raised

by Trojie



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Angst, Fan Encounters, Friendship, Gen, Post-MCR, domesticity? kind of?, guitar nerd support group
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 13:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13928064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: 7: Joe/Ray (or Joe + Ray) - the kids aren't all rightJoe gets mistaken for Ray Toro every so often. It's funny, right up until MCR break up.





	black banners raised

Joe gets mistaken for Ray Toro every so often. It happens more when neither of the bands is actually touring, as people start to forget exactly what both he and Toro look like, and it's usually kind of funny, watching someone slowly realise where they went wrong and try to extricate themselves from the scenario. But a lot of the time they don't realise at all. Joe's signed more than a few My Chem CDs. Maybe they'll be collectors' items one day, who knows.

He texts Toro when it happens, just to be a dick, like _bein your doppelganger is exhausting_ or _do you wanna just like be in my band so i can take a break i swear noone will notice_

_kid asked me what gways really like. i said loud in bed_

_doesit not get tiring being this much of an inspiration to troubled youth all the time??_

_honestly we cld probably straightup pull a parent trap_

Sometimes Toro gets it too - fans who wanna know why Fall Out Boy never play Bang the Doldrums live, or who're mostly actually wishing they'd spotted Patrick but will take any autograph they can get. Joe gets the feeling Ray probably actually takes it a little more seriously than he does, but not by much.

It's fun -- it's _funny_ \-- right up until MCR break up.

***

_a boy cried on me today_

It wasn't even a case of mistaken identity - the kid knew who he was, it's just … there's a lot of overlap, that's all, between their fanbases.

Joe's got eyeliner smudged down his shirt because the kid asked for a photo but it was all apparently kind of too much and he broke down. He couldn't have been more than fourteen.

He doesn't text that to Toro. He doesn't text Toro about any more fan encounters, even the cases of mistaken identity, for the rest of that whole year, because he knows what it's like when people won't stop asking you about something that doesn't exist any more. 

***

_kid asked me yesterday about the tuning in sugar_

The text wakes Joe up. They just got done touring a week ago and he hasn't set an alarm since he got home, it's been bliss.

_told her dropd_

Joe blinks at his phone groggily. The name takes a while to come into focus

 _id have told her google_ he eventually manages to text back. He thinks. He hasn't got his glasses on yet and he's still in a war with predictive text even though he's had this phone over three months.

 _its been forever man. wanna hang sometime?_ comes after he's almost dozed off again. 

It normally takes a while before Joe wants to share space with other humans again, off-tour, but it's only been a few days this time and he's already rattling around in his LA place, not quite sure what to do with himself. Not lonely, exactly, but conscious that he is, currently, alone. 

Maybe Toro's feeling the same kinda way.

 _come over_ he texts back. He looks at the time and decides the sun is far enough over the yardarm. _bring beer_

***

Ray brings a goldtop Les Paul _and_ some beer, because he's got priorities. 

Joe gets a bottle opener and they go downstairs to what he usually calls his studio but is actually basically just a repurposed bedroom full of guitars, and he finds Ray a lead. He watches him as he pokes around through Joe's pedal collection and picks out a couple to daisychain together, and tries to remember if they've ever actually jammed. They've played together, but it hasn't been since … fuck, Warped, when Joe was numb and mentally preparing for a funeral and just had to get Ray enough up to speed that he could perform for a couple hundred mostly stoned kids in a parking lot, and wasn't paying that much attention.

He doesn't think they've ever just played around to play around. 

'I take it back,' he says after a couple of hours, when they're both sprawled on the floor up against amp cabs, on beer number three with their guitars in their laps. 'Patrick would definitely notice. _Shit_ you got fast.'

Ray laughs. 'So did you. Patrick's sound's not really my style, anyway. He's lucky you're so flexible.'

'Whatever. He says jump, I say 'not in that fucking key', we argue for a week and he wins.' Joe leans back and stretches his arms up, up, up, til his shoulders crack a little. He winces. 'It's a system, I guess. What's it like being part of a democracy?'

When he looks back down, Ray's not laughing anymore, just tracing his fingers around the stoptail on his guitar.

'Hey,' says Joe, reaching out to touch Ray's shoulder. 'I'm sorry, man, I just …'

Ray smiles, and it's clear it costs him some effort. 'Yeah, I forget too.'

***

Joe's browsing the canned vegetable aisle at the grocery store, mostly zoned out but basically thinking about the next week's worth of meals, when someone says, 'um … hey, uh. I was wondering -' behind him. 

He takes a second to pull his brain back to the kind of functionality that can deal with humans, and turns around. 

The fan is of some indeterminate teenage vintage and he's not sure if they're a boy or a girl, which is almost certainly by design, but what he can tell is that they're wearing an old Folie tour t-shirt. 

'It's my favourite album,' they say, conspiratorially, when they clock him noticing it. 'I love Save Rock and Roll, but Folie just …' They smile some kind of way, and Joe forces his own mouth to turn up at the corners and thanks them, and signs the inside of their wrist with a Sharpie. That's still fucking weird, it's always going to be fucking weird, signing people's skin like some kind of … people are always telling Pete that he had some kind of formative influence on them, but Joe? Joe doesn't get to sign people like he made them. He's aware that to a lot of people he's just a session musician to Pete and Patrick's insanity. 

He's not stupid, he knows what _deux_ translates to, thanks.

The text comes when he's in the line for the cashier, six cans of … something, whatever, he'll eat it, in his basket, trying to keep his head down and not get recognised again. 

_i made too much spaghetti dont let me die alone_ says Toro. _dont bother w beer ive got plenty_

***

They don't actually live that far apart, and they're both bored, and they're both nerds who sit at home noodling anyway when they have nothing better to do, so they just kind of end up alternating whose house they do it in. 

Ray makes amazing barbeque, it turns out. Joe feeds him takeout sushi and homemade lasagne and bundt cake in return. They fuck around playing Iron Maiden covers and bitching about Yngwe Malmsteen and one day Ray's giving him shit about Kirk Hammett so Joe rolls his eyes and says, 'you can't talk, with your fucking Brian May fetish - I heard your last two albums,' and fuck, there he goes again. 

He's about to apologise and then Ray says 'fuck you, I got to _play_ with Brian May.' It's stilted and it's forced but it's something. Joe punches him in the shoulder. 

'Lucky fuck.'

He means that. 

'Hey, you formed a supergroup with half of Anthrax, you don't get to be jealous of my Brian May time.'

Joe pokes his tongue out. Maybe Ray has a point. Joe's had a few high points of his own, it's true.

***

 _apparently ur being robbed by patrick and deserve better_

_wtf?_

_i just got the most intense lecture on the levels on your last album dude you have no idea. Ur kids are ferocious_

_amazing how they cant tell us apart then_

_actully i think maybe this one did know who i was n just needed some1 to vent at_

***

It's not like Joe's trying to write, this soon after touring, but sometimes your brain goes off on adventures without you.

He isn't even paying attention to what his fingers are doing when Toro joins in, and then he snaps to in a split second, on like a livewire or a lightbulb. But the _wait wait stop, stop_ never comes, the inevitable reframe never happens, and eight bars passes, twelve, sixteen, til they're both in the groove of the riff and Joe starts to tweak it and Toro keeps on underneath him, steady like a train on the tracks, giving him the space to do his thing. 

When they finally squeal to a halt with it Ray stretches and says, 'I like that one. You should do something with it.'

Joe snorts. 'Yeah, maybe.'

'I'm serious! It's super hooky - you could really make something out of it. C'mon, at least write it down.'

'Dude -' but Ray's already grabbed a pen and an old envelope off the desk to scribble on. He scratches six quick lines across it and starts filling in tab at lightspeed.

'Never waste a good riff, man,' he says, flourishing the bit of paper at Joe. 'Trust me. You'll want it next time you're in the studio and you won't fucking remember it.'

Joe takes it and folds it up carefully and puts it in his back pocket. 'Thanks, man,' he says.

Ray bites his lip. 'Sorry, I - I don't mean to push,' he says. 'I guess I. I guess I ... miss. This. He gestures around at the room, the gear, the bottles, the ... everything.

Joe gets it, he does. But things can't always just be this fucking easy, they can't just be jamming in an old bedroom and writing catchy shit, not any more. He knows what's gonna happen with this riff. He's gonna plan on taking it and copying it out into a notebook, he really is. But it'll end up going through the washing machine, and it'll come out in bits before he can put it in front of anyone. 

That'll save time. 

***

_can i come over??_

It's nine o'clock at night and Joe's been staring at a TV that's showing some kind of reality cooking show marathon for an hour or more. Andy called earlier. Pete wants to schedule studio time for the end of the month, he's got some kind of concept or whatever. 

_sure. mi casa su casa toro_

The knock on his door comes ten minutes later. 'That was quick.' Ray's smile is a sketch of its usual brilliance. Joe pulls him inside. 'What's up?'

Ray shakes his head. 'Can we not?'

Joe settles him on the sofa in front of Gordon Ramsay and goes to get beer, changes his mind, and comes back with whiskey and two glasses. 'No talking,' he agrees. 'Suits me.'

It takes about half an hour, a pigeon shitting in a restaurant, a series of ads for blenders that are way, way too excited about zucchini, and two top-ups of their glasses before Ray says, 'I got cried on again today.'

Joe winces. 

'That's five times in four days. I'm gonna stop going outside my house, I swear to God. I don't even wanna _talk_ about Wednesday.' Ray downs the rest of his drink and looks at Joe helplessly. 

'It sucks, man,' is all Joe has to offer. He can roughly guess what might have happened on Wednesday. Fans run in packs. 

'It's been a year, over a year,' says Ray softly. 'I just.' He doesn't finish.

Joe wants to tell him, _they're not gonna stop, man. They didn't stop for us, they sure as fucking shit won't stop for you guys, not til the day you die._ He doesn't know how to fix this. He doesn't even know where to start.

Instead he gets up to grab the bottle, refills Ray's drink, and says 'You alright?' 

Ray traces his fingers over the whiskey glass, looks up at Joe. His expression would be almost tranquil, if you couldn't see that his eyes are red at the corners like he's been rubbing at them. 'Are you?'

The last of the whiskey goes down Joe's throat, straight from the bottle, and then he shrugs. 'As I've ever been, I guess.'

Something scrunches under his ass when he plunks himself back down again, and he shoves his hand under himself to try and rescue it. Six lines of tab are smudged but still readable on an old, ripped-up envelope. Joe laughs. 

Maybe it is this easy.

'Hey,' he says. 'You wanna start a band?'


End file.
